SPORT AND TRAVEL 123 



found just one drop of blood on the snow, but never 

 another. Presently one of my hunters showed me 

 where the wounded animal had eaten snow, and said 

 he thought he must be hit in the stomach, and advised 

 me to leave him to lie down and follow him up on the 

 following day. This I resolved to do, as it was get- 

 ting late, and we were some distance from camp. 



On the following day we followed the wounded stag 

 a long way, but had to give it up at last. So that 

 chance of getting a fine maral head was lost by bad 

 shooting. That my bullet touched the stag, there can 

 be no doubt, as otherwise he would not have bounded 

 forwards as he did when I fired, nor would there have 

 been the single telltale drop of blood on the snow. 

 He may have been struck in the body, for I was shoot- 

 ing with a .256-bore Mannlicher rifle, and these 

 small-bored weapons often make a puncture from 

 which no blood exudes. But I am rather inclined to 

 think that I practically missed, my bullet only just 

 cutting the stag across the top of the shoulders, for I 

 was shooting with a rifle I was unaccustomed to and 

 had never used before, and I found afterwards that it 

 shot very high with the two hundred yards' sight. I 

 trust I am right in this conjecture, as in that case the 

 beautiful animal I fired at was practically uninjured, 

 and is still roaming over the pine-clad slopes of his 

 native mountains. These stags were not sufficiently 

 near me to enable me to describe their antlers. What 

 struck me was that their horns seemed very light in 



